Date
The play's date of authorship and early performance history is unknown. The events upon which the play is based occurred in 1610, so that the drama must post-date that year. Some critics have seen signs of influence from Ben Jonson's The Devil is an Ass in Webster's play, and so have dated it soon after the autumn 1616 premier of Jonson's play; but other scholars have favored a date after 1620, based on contemporary allusions in the text.
According to one theory, Webster wrote his play for Queen Anne's Men, and specifically with the view that their lead actor Richard Perkins would play the protagonist Romelio. The play was designed to open the Phoenix Theatre — the renamed Cockpit Theatre after it was rebuilt following damage in the Shrovetide apprentices' riot in the spring of 1617.
Read more about this topic: The Devil's Law Case
Famous quotes containing the word date:
“We, when we sow the seeds of doubt deeper than the most up-to- date and modish free-thought has ever dreamed of doing, we well know what we are about. Only out of radical skepsis, out of moral chaos, can the Absolute spring, the anointed Terror of which the time has need.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives—from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango—with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists’ stage.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidents—or at least their staffs—never stop making mischief.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)